Mike Celizic

There’s nothing to be done for it now. Ohio State is in the BCS Championship Game, and it’s too late to ask for a recount of the votes and a reboot of the silly computers that somehow chose the Buckeyes as a championship-caliber team.

But this should be it for the Buckeyes and the Big Ten. Either beat LSU, a two-loss SEC team, or we pass a new rule for the BCS that would go something like this: Two losses in the SEC or Big 12 are equal to zero losses in the Big Ten. So unless a Big Ten team is undefeated and nobody else is around to play for the title, the Big Ten doesn’t get in.

Ohio State and Big Ten fans may find this harsh and uncaring, and it is. But it’s also based on fact. It’s time to admit it: In big situations, the conference is more like the Little Ten.

Ohio State is 0-8 in bowl games against the SEC and just 18-20 in bowl games since going to its first one in 1921. That record includes a 4-1 run in the Buckeyes’ first five bowls. Since then, they’re 14-19. This isn’t the stuff of legends.

The Big Ten dominates headlines but not college football. Its teams rarely go very far abroad to find top-notch out-of-conference foes, usually resorting to Notre Dame. Ohio State did take on Texas in a home-and-home in 2005-06, losing the first and winning the second, And next year, it’s playing USC in the first of a two-year series.

That’s progress, and maybe the BCS rule ought to be that a Big Ten team has to beat a quality opponent out of conference before it can play in the title game. That at least legitimizes the Buckeyes’ presence in the title game last year. But this year, they beat no one out of conference (Youngstown State, Akron, Washington and Kent State) and lost to Illinois in the Big Ten. I don’t think that’s good enough.

The Buckeyes can change my mind by not just showing up against LSU, but beating them. I know LSU has two losses, but I don’t think the Buckeyes will end the night looking as if they belong on the same field. They seldom do.

It’s not the Buckeyes’ fault, I suppose, that they end up with these high rankings. It’s the conference itself. Just look at the Big Ten’s record in the national championship picture.

College football Complete recaps of all 32 games

Yes, Michigan won in 1997 (which it shared with Nebraska) and the Buckeyes won for the 2002 season, but before that you have to go back to 1968 to find another Big Ten champion, when Ohio State won the polls that decided things in those days. So the entire celebrated conference has three titles in 40 seasons. That’s hardly the sign of greatness; a number of schools have that many or more titles in that period all by themselves.

It’s been popular to rip on the Big East as the weakest conference in the BCS, but that’s just wrong. The Big Ten is no stronger. Neither, for that matter, is the Pac-10, which has one superior team — USC — and that’s it.

The power lives in the SEC and Big 12. Oklahoma would probably give LSU a better game. I’m not sure Georgia would; I’m also not sure it wouldn’t.

MORE FROM COLLEGE FOOTBALL

College football Section Front

For 'Bama, Auburn the biggest game, so far Bama's defense rolling, Auburn's struggling No. 3 Texas trying to erase bad memories at Texas A&M Opinion: McCoy keeping No. 3 ’Horns on same page Predictions 101: Favorites to roll; Irish to fall again   CFT: Colorado confirms Hawkins will return   CFT's Saturday Storylines: Feast on Friday treats CFT's Worst of the Weak: Foolish fake punt USC, LSU, Miami alive for BCS at-large bids Bowl Projections: Penn State in BCS picture College football Section Front   Add College football headlines to your news reader: